Thursday Afternoon Storm Again - 21/01/2016
 

Plenty of holding already as the storm front moves through.

Already seen QF865 B737 VH-XZE from the Gold Coast "Go Around" on Runway 34R.

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At 1849L this is what the holding looked like - spaghetti time for ATC

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ATC nightmare.
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It was an interesting time leading up to curfew last night with all the holding, the flow on effect and whether aircraft, particularly international would be ready for push back prior to 11:00 pm.

The most interesting was EK413 from Auckland which didn't hang around in a holding pattern for very long before diverting to Melbourne. You can see it on the bottom of both radar displays that Robert has posted. It had already crossed into Victoria by 8:38 pm.

The A380 refuelled and then returned to Sydney. EK413 was obviously given dispensation to land on 34L by 11:20 pm because the tower commented after touchdown that he had landed with 30 seconds to spare. To achieve his touch down time he was given some pretty mean direct tracking to one of the waypoints 10 - 15 miles south of Sydney. Without this tracking or opposite direction traffic he wouldn't have made it.

Also affected were CI52 and QF25 who were both waiting for take off on runway 16R (10 knots down wind) and had to wait for Emirates to land before they could depart. They both departed by 11:25 pm with the tower assuring them that they were able to depart without dispensaton as they had requested push back clearance prior to 11:00 pm. QF25 was delayed by Cathay pushing back behind him.

The fun didn't stop there as I fell asleep at the computer and missed what happened to the departing EK413. It had been given a latest departure time of 12 midnight and I think was to be operated by the arriving EK414 on turnaround which had landed around 10:30pm. Looking at the radar displays EZ413 is now off the WA coast and has left from Melbourne, so it looks as though it departed Sydney by midnight and flew to Melbourne to refuel and maybe finish cleaning the aircraft. I wonder if transferring baggage made it onto the flight.

All in all an intriguing couple of hours to watch and listen. Thank you Graham for your 16R radar and airport displays, with added ATC, which enabled me to see all this unfolding. I find it funny when I hear an instruction on my scanner that is broadcast about 5 seconds later on the ATC on your site. What happens to the broadcast technically? Is it recorded and repeated or done some other way? Possibly like the delay in broadcasting talk back radio.

Thanks James,

We have permission from LiveATC to include their "Widget" on our website, so any delays would be from LiveATC receiving, processing and delivering the feed (no delays are introduced from our site).

I can be really interesting to see how the ATC guys work through some really challenging situations, particularly bad weather. Because I live so close to the airport, I also use my scanner to listed to Sydney Ground to complete the picture (Sydney Ground is not available from the internet).

Graham, I live at Cherrybrook in north west Sydney a few miles west of the 16R centreline about 13 nm from the threshold. I can pick up all Sydney frequencies on my Uniden scanner with roof top aerial except the tower transmissions on 120.5. Your ATC transmissions for the tower and departure/arrivals fill in the gap, plus the time delayed widget duplicates.

On a separate matter, I notice that some flights on 16R still have the previous destination/origin on the box beside the plane icon, eg QF81/82 still shows the old Adelaide stop and QF117/118 still shows Wellington and not Hong Kong. Is this something that you are able to amend or is it dependent on others fixing from the feed you receive? I also see from time to time domestic flights with no Sydney mention arriving in Sydney, where there has been no Sydney diversions. They are not flights overflying Melbourne to the Gold Coast or Brisbane to Hobart etc.

I'm told one aircraft operated EK413 AKL-MEL-SYD with a dispensation to land after 2300L where the arriving aircraft from EK414 took over and operated EK413 SYD-MEL-DXB. Pax were lined up in the airbridge at SYD ready to go, there was no cleaning done in SYD, no cargo was loaded and only enough fuel was uploaded to make it to MEL. As for transfer baggage, I couldn't say.

Thanks for the changed Flight Number details James, QF81/82 and QF117/118 have now been corrected.

Not sure what this might be, again it could be a Flight Number that has changed, Tiger have made many changes to their Flight Numbers over the past few years. Just let me know if you seen, and I will check our database.

Thanks Graham. I notice that QF43/44 is now the seasonal flight to and from Denpasar but still shows as the Auckland flight. I'll let you know any more I see.

QANTAS are very much into reusing their old flight numbers. I guess they have no other option with limited choice.

Cheers James